Education bills to watch in 2012 in the Florida Legislature

With the beginning of the Florida 2012 legislative session yesterday, I thought it might be a good time to do a roundup of the education bills to watch this season.

Any particular issues or legislation that you’re watching this session? Post a comment below or send us an email at EducationNews@PBPost.com.

For now, here are a few that we find interesting and will definitely be watching:

Parent-trigger bill: Bills filed in the legislature this month — Senate bill 1718 and House bill 1191 — would give parents of children at low-performing schools the power to choose several different options in hopes of turning the school around. If more than 50 percent of parents agree, they could turn the underperforming school into a “district-managed turnaround school,” convert it to a charter school, close the school or bring in an outside firm to manage the school. These Florida bills, labeled “parent empowerment in education,” are similar to other parent-trigger laws in other states, notably California. But the laws are controversial, as The New York Times notes in this story. A parent advocacy group, Parents Across America, which counts Boca Raton mother Rita Solnet as one of its founding members, has come out against these bills, saying in a statement that it believes “the underlying goal of this law was to turn public schools over to charter operators.”

School bus ads: This week, the Senate Education Committee approved a bill that would allow school districts to sell advertisements on school buses. The committee voted 4-2, with Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Palm Beach, opposing the bill. Proponents say the bill, SB 344, would allow school districts to generate more revenue. Others worry about some of the consequences, saying it pushes consumerism into schools and could exacerbate inequities between students who can afford things on the advertisements and those who can’t. Some have also expressed concerns about safety, saying drivers may focus more on the ads than on driving safely around the buses. The bill bans advertisements for products deemed inappropriate for children, such as alcohol, but that ban could be challenged in court if the bill passes into law.
Similarly, there’s another bill, filed by Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, that would allow school districts to sell the naming rights to school cafeterias.

Charter school funding: A new charter advocacy industry group, the Florida Charter School Alliance, is pushing for equal funding of charter schools and traditional public schools. It is pushing for the passage of HB 903, which would allow for school districts to share revenue generated by capital outlay millage levy with charter schools. In the bill, if school districts choose not to share that revenue, “the Florida Education Finance Program allocation for that school district shall be recalculated so that each charter school in the school district receives, on a per-student basis, the same amount of funds that it would have received if the district school board shared the millage levy revenue.”

On a different note with charter school funding, SB 1338 would require each charter school in the state to maintain a website with information about the school, its personnel, and its programs — as well as any fees paid to a school’s management company, if it has one.

More on charter schools: one last bill with charter schools that we’re watching right now: SB 1162 would create a new category of charter schools, called “family charter academies.” To read more about it, click here for the Tampa Bay Times’ education blog.

School vouchers: This week, the Senate PreK-12 Education Committee passed SB 962, which would allow 6,500 more low-income students use state-backed vouchers to go to private schools. The bill would raise the program’s cap for the next school year by $31 million to a total of $250 million. For more on this bill, click here for a story by the News Service of Florida.